


A Little Chaos

by Fatally_Procrastinating



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Hopefully it'll turn out well, Rating is for later chapters, Spoilers, i have a plan
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2016-01-13
Packaged: 2018-05-09 23:44:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5560480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fatally_Procrastinating/pseuds/Fatally_Procrastinating
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kylo Ren manages to escape the disintegrating Starkiller Base in a TIE fighter. Heavily injured from his fight with the scavenger, he succumbs to unconsciousness before he can finish entering coordinates into the fighter's autopilot and crash lands on an unfamiliar planet. Stripped and stranded, he must rely on the woman who saved him while he searches for a way to contact the First Order. Weeks pass. Resolves weaken. It's not romance. It's just a little chaos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Escape

The thrum of the dying planet resonated beneath him as Kylo stared up at the falling snow. Pain coursed through his body. He would die if he didn’t move soon, caught up in the inferno his weakness had allowed. _His_ weakness. Kylo ground his teeth, hands clenching into fists. That’s what it always came down to, wasn’t it. Too weak to control his emotions for his parents. Too weak to submit to the teachings of his uncle. Too weak to abandon the light side of the Force. Too weak to take control of the battle. Too weak. Too weak. _Too weak!_

With a snarl, he heaved forward, using the fresh wave of agony as momentum to propel himself onto his feet. When he walked, it was with a limp. Blood dripped from his side when he bent over to snatch the pieces of his lightsaber. He staggered onwards, vision blurring until the world became a shifting sea of white, rolling and trembling in uncertain patterns. Closing his eyes against the chaos, he reached out with his mind.

 _There_.

A set of TIE fighters in an intact bunker. He could make it. He _would_ make it.

Kylo pounded on the wound at his side. Blood spattered the snow as pain crashed through him in a fresh wave, setting his nerves on fire with clarity. He harnessed it. Focused on it. It kept him moving even as the earth cracked beneath his feet. He was panting by the time he’d reached the building. Nothing but silence and stale air met him when he stepped inside. He staggered in and a series of red lights, set in rows within the floor, came to life, casting the fighter in a sinister glow.

The earth rumbled. Lights exploded in faint _pops_ as the floor groaned and buckled.

Digging into his wound now, _needing_ the pain, he ran. Another groan sent the room shaking. Chunks of the ceiling crashed around him. More lights went out while he clambered into the fighter. It took two missiles to blast apart the nearest wall, the shockwave reducing the room to chunks of debris as he sped away from the imploding planet.

His vision darkened. The pain started to give way to numbness. He couldn’t feel his legs.

“Not yet,” he growled, blinking hard to try and fight off the black. The longer he stared at the control panel, the more it shifted out of recognition. Steadying himself, he had to take the buttons one at a time, sweat dripping down his face and onto the console. He had to get there. He couldn’t disappoint Snoke again. He couldn’t show weakness _again_. Not after he’d killed—Not after—!

Kylo cursed as sensation abandoned his torso, then his arms. He couldn’t see. Even the low hum of the ship was growing fainter. Without pain, the day washed over him, enveloping him, _drowning_ him.

_Will you help me?_

Had that been real?

_Yes. Anything._

His heart slowed. No more hum. No more feeling.

Letting his thoughts slip away, he embraced the black.


	2. This Isn't What I Wanted

A woman was humming in the darkness. Notes rose and fell seemingly at random in an uneven and slow tune as though the woman were making the song up as she went. It was soothing, almost like a lullaby.

Kylo hated it.

Pain started to seep through as he fought to open his eyes. He didn’t know how long it took. Five minutes. An hour. Days? Until light filtered into consciousness, almost taunting him with his inability to see his surroundings. The humming stopped, replaced by the low whine of old wood.

“Are you awake? Or just dreaming again?”

He blinked and color bled into his sight until, bit by bit, the room around him came into focus. _Workshop_ was a better term than _room_. Thin metal walls and a thin metal roof covered a stone floor. Notches had been cut along the metal sheets, half-covered with angled flaps so they let in the light and the breeze without letting in the sun. The light caught on the dozens of crystals and gears and pieces of mirror and metal that hung from the ceiling, throwing beams of color haphazardly about the room. Rust had started to eat away at the edges of the door which was latched shut.

He lay on a padded black cot barely larger than himself in the most isolated corner. Glimpsing the opposite end of the room over his toes, droids lined one wall while the other was covered with tools hung in place on metal hooks. Similar hooks were spaced out along the other walls as well.

“Testing, testing—one, two, three.”

Kylo couldn’t turn his head so much as let it flop over to the side. His body felt heavy and weak, his thoughts slipping before he could concentrate on any one thing.

The woman sat on a precarious stool in front of a large metal bench. Her dark brown hair frizzed around her face and over one shoulder where she’d put it in a braid. Her skin was tanned from years spent in the sun and her brown eyes were magnified by the large glasses she wore. Even sitting, she seemed tall. Her exposed arms were well-muscled and flexed when she took her glasses off and set them atop her head. Her left hand lingered on the bench when she turned to him, fingers out of his sight—a large burn scar covered most of that arm, distorting the color and texture of the skin.

“You can hear me?” she asked.

“Yes.” He scowled when his voice cracked.

Her head tilted to the side when she smiled. “And it speaks too. That’s certainly going to make things easier between us. Do you know your name?”

“Of course I do.”

“Mind sharing it?”

He narrowed his eyes, focusing on her face, trying to press inside her thoughts. His mind shifted before he could reach out to her, splitting and sputtering about like a drop of water hitting a hot pan. “You first.”

“Aria,” she answered without hesitation. The smile remained on her lips even as it drained from her voice. “Now you.”

“… Kylo. Where am I?”

“You’re in the middle of nowhere,” she said. “Squarely located between that one place you know and everywhere else. What’s your story, Kylo?”

“Story?” He tried to lift his arm but it wouldn’t obey. Nothing did. He grimaced as he managed to shift his body an inch to the right. His side and face and shoulders ached—the pain too dull to fuel his strength but too sharp to ignore altogether.

“Well, let’s see.” The woman leaned forward but kept her left hand obstructed from view. “You crash-landed in a TIE fighter, carrying a damaged lightsaber, bearing wounds that should’ve killed you several times over, dressed in all black. So what’s your story? Were you caught in a battle with Resistance forces and had to retreat? Are you a defector from the First Order? A spy who was forced to flee?”

He studied the tightly controlled expression on her face. Behind her, dangling above her shoulder, a piece of mirror rotated slowly in the subtle breeze. He watched it from the corner of his eye, focusing on it, pushing past the inconstant haze of his mind until— _there_. A glimpse of the hand she kept hidden from him. Fingers tight around a dagger’s hilt. Knuckles white from the grip. Muscles in the scarred arm tensing as she prepared a potential strike.

“Are those my only choices?” he asked. He pushed forward with his mind again, trying to peek into her thoughts, trying to find the answer that would keep her from using that knife. His concentration slipped before he could reach. What had she done to him?

“No,” she said. “But those are the common ones. You’re not the first person who’s ended up stuck here; we get all kinds—those trying to hide, those trying to run, those trying to pledge themselves into a new life. Which is it for you?”

He ground his teeth together, needing time, needing a chance to think. “Why can’t I move?”

“You were thrashing about when I was patching you up.” She gestured to his side and shoulders where thick bandaged were wrapped around him. He wore no clothes but she had covered him with a blanket. “Didn’t want to risk you reopening your wounds, so I’ve been feeding you kaja berries whenever you’ve been near-conscious. Your body’ll be numb for another few hours and you won’t be able to focus on anything for a while, but it’s better than bleeding out. Now answer the question.”

“I’m no one of importance.”

“I don’t believe that,” she said. Her voice hardened. “What’s your story, Kylo?”

“I don’t have one,” he snarled.

“ _I don’t believe that_.”

He glared at her but she kept her eyes soft. Even without being able to read her mind, he knew it was a deception. Her body was tense, ready to snap at a single wrong word and plunge the knife she held into his throat. Everything he’d worked for, everything he’d sacrificed—gone because he hadn’t picked the right lie.

He licked his lips. “I report to Le—to General Organa of the Resistance. I was on a mission with Poe Dameron when we were caught and… interrogated.” He had to clear his throat; it felt cracked and scratchy. “I was in my cell when I heard an explosion. When the door to my room was damaged, I slipped out, grabbed whatever I could, and ran. There. Satisfied?”

“The lightsaber?”

“I found it with the clothes. Obviously, I wasn’t very good at fighting with it.”

Aria’s eyes narrowed. Her gaze shifted from his face to his bandages and back again. All at once, her posture relaxed. She leaned against the bench, the smile returning to her eyes. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”

Reaching to her left, she snatched up his stack of clothes and set them on the corner for him to see. “There was a tracker inside the belt, but I deactivated it. I wasn’t able to find any others and the fact that there haven’t been any Stormtroopers shooting up my house probably means that you’re safe. Or safe as you can be, I suppose. It’s hard to know what those First Order types are thinking.” 

She shifted to the edge of her stool, her bare toes gripping the legs to help keep her from toppling over. “Medi did what she could to patch your face up, but I’m afraid your nose was beyond saving.”

“My nose…?” His arm flopped uselessly when he tried to reach up and touch his face. He caught glimpses in the pieces of mirror and polished metal that hung from the ceiling—some green substance, thick and slimy, was slathered across the wound the scavenger had inflicted with the saber that should’ve rightfully been his. A scar would remain after the wound healed but his face seemed intact. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s always going to be that big,” she said.

“It’s—” He jerked his head to the side, glaring at her which only made her chuckle.

“I’m sorry,” she lied, the laughter clinging to her words. “Too far?”

“Nothing I haven’t heard before,” he managed through clenched teeth. “I’m sure you feel very clever.”

“I do, actually.” Her grin broadened. “I saved a dead man, destroyed something of the First Order’s, and I even got a lightsaber to play with out of the whole deal. I’m feeling _very_ clever.”

“That lightsaber is not a toy!” Latching onto the anger growing inside him, he focused on Aria’s face. He could snap her neck. Or strangle her. Force her to do as he wished. Hux was no fool. Even with the tracker destroyed, it would only be a matter of time before they found him. Best to get the woman out of the way before then.

“Take it easy there, Kylo. I was only teasing.” She left her workbench, coming to kneel beside the bed. The back of her hand brushed across his forehead. The touch was too gentle—like his father’s. “You still have a bit of a fever. Medi, can you come here for a second?”

Across the room, one of the droids whirred into life as it started clanking across the room. It was relatively humanoid in shape, its metal plates mismatched in color. Its fingers were a series of syringes and scalpels and drills that made him shrink away. On the left side of its chest, the identification code stood out in large, red letters: M3-D1.

He rolled his eyes. “Please tell me you weren’t the one to name it.”

Aria’s smile broadened. She left his side for a moment before returning with a glass of water. He hated how he had to rely on her to drink. How weak and pathetic he was—unable to move, barely able to speak. It was worse than his defeat at the scavenger’s hands. Worse than the guilt and sorrow that had pressed down on him after he’d… after…

“Get away from me!” he hissed when she started towards him with one of Medi’s syringes. “I don’t need your help. I don’t need—!”

She swooped in, easily slapping his arm aside when he tried to block her. The metal point pricked his neck. “When you’re not in danger of bleeding out,” she said, “I might start believing you. Until then, I’m afraid you’re stuck here as my guest. Lucky us.” Pressing a finger against his forehead when he tried to rise, she pressed him down into the bed and handed the syringe back to the medical droid.

He tried to protest. The words turned to lead on his tongue, forcing him into silence as a wave of weariness crept through his limbs, weighing him down to the cot.

“Wha ha—” The room began to fog and he struggled to resist. “Message. Need… send message.” He needed to contact Hux. Send up a beacon of some kind. Snoke would be waiting for him. He couldn’t disappoint the Supreme Leader again—not after everything the man had done for him.

“Later,” she said, voice gentle like her touch had been. “We can contact your friends later. Rest now, Kylo.”

“No. Need to… need to…”

_Need to rest._


End file.
